General Resources and Reading Suggestions

[x_los]

This is a post to drop titles of and links to relevant reading material, be it nonfiction, poetry we might want to collectively hit up in future or read on our own time, or fiction (including trying to hustle up fresh blood for your latest reading/watching obsessions, and information as to where one can find such titles).

We'll talk about poetry and nonfiction as a group before adding it to the Great Plan. 

This post will be made public once the privacy discussion is resolved. 

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How to read Chinese poetry : a guided anthology Cai, Zong-qi

[x_los]

Download Link: https://b-ok.cc/book/2635704/1def1c
Online: https://www.abirus.ru/user/files/Ebooks/1cai_zong_ed_how_to_read_chinese_poetry_a_guided_anthology.pdf

In this "guided" anthology, experts lead students through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from antiquity to the modern time. The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or genre. Poems are presented in Chinese and English and are accompanied by a tone-marked romanized version, an explanation of Chinese linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended reading strategies. Sound recordings of the poems are available online free of charge. These unique features facilitate an intense engagement with Chinese poetical texts and help the reader derive aesthetic pleasure and insight from these works as one could from the original.

Some notes on the preface, introduction and Tetrasyllabic Shi Poetry sections

[x_los]

In a note on how to use this anthology, I’m not really getting this: ‘In Chinese poetry, the prescribed rhythm of sounds does not merely yield musical pleasure and “an echo to the sense,” as Alexander Pope said about English poetry, but it is the sense itself because it dictates how words are arranged to generate meaning.’?

Introduction:
'The world of the imagination is the venue for two other important themes:“Imagined Journey to the Celestial World” and “Remembrances.” Transcendentalroaming (youxian), a theme rst found in ancient shamanistic songs (C2.1–3), isof perennial interest to literati poets. It enables them to fantasize a solitary escapefrom the mundane world into a pure land of eternal bliss. It also furnishes themwith an e ective means of ridiculing all worldly attachments.' 

This is SO reminiscent of Western Romances' uses of otherworlds as Aisling Byrne explores them in her book of the same name

'“The Wandering Man” (youzi) is an enduring theme about the world of culture and politics. It comprises a broad array of depressing topos and motifs: the physical hardships of travel on o cial duty, the unreliability of political patrons, the treach- erousness of court politics, the spectacle of famine and exploitation, the incessant frontier wars, the prolonged introspection of an insomniac man, the departure of a beloved friend, and, above all, the constant homesickness of a scholar-o cial.'

ah yes the PhD bitching genre of poetry

'shattered dreams of officialdom'

the extent to which you could write 'what classic chinese poetry can teach us about academia' is embarrassing 

'There are far fewer ending con-sonants in Chinese than in English: n and ng in Chinese of all periods' 

only just noticed this is SUCH a common word-ending in chinese. why is this a thing??

I'm not grasping Semantic Rhythm (p 36)

How to Read Shi Poetry:"Finally, it has been argued that theremay originally have been some signi cance to the sequence of these three hun-dred–plus poems. Whether such signi cance existed or can be seen in the extanttext is di cult to determine. Yet it is clear that reading one poem in the context ofanother, often contiguous text proves useful."

oh that's interesting 

'here the persona may be seen either as a subject who admireshis lord greatly or as a young woman praising her intended. This ambiguity of thispair (subject to lord or female to male lover) is one commonly seen in later Chi-nese verse and turns on the term junzi, which means literally “lord” but can also beused to refer to a “lordly man”—that is, a husband, a lover, or someone the personaadmires greatly.'

slight trace of Gals Being Pals-ism, but go off. I don't think that's definitively What's Up, but not even entertaining a POSSIBILITY there is as academically childish as it is common.

It strikes me that something v like Helen Vendler's treatment of Shakespeare's sonnets would be very useful and welcome in Anglo-crit of these poems, if such a thing doesn't already exist?

'This kind of progression in the Book of Poetry has come to be called incrementalrepetition. In “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi,” there are two such repetitions: Zhong Ziphysically crashing through barriers and tree branches to reach his beloved, juxta-posed to the singer’s widening mental picture of those who will object to his woo-ing. The result is a chiasmatic (the inversion of word order of similar phrases inan a-b-b-a pattern) tension: Zhong Zi approaching in increments, and the e ectsthereof distancing themselves beyond the singer’s control—or so she imagines it,her emotions crossing in parallel to the chiasmatic repetitions in her song.' 
That's super interesting

'the gathering-plant imagery of lines 1–2 and 5–6, which is often asso-ciated with male–female relations.' 

“on the mountains there is X,” for ex-ample, was usually employed in songs about separation. [...] Parallelism, especially in stock phrases such as “on the mountains there is X, / in the lowlands there is Y,” is common" 

"another rhetorical device, the linking of lines 6 and 7 throughthe repetition of “vermilion stalk” and the doubled “beautiful” that links line 11 toline 12 (a device known in Chinese as lianzhu [linking pearls] and in English as anadiplosis)." 

'The River has branches that leave and return—
When this person returned home,
He did not take me,
He did not take me,
And afterward he will regret it!'
the river has branches, and I will beat his ass with them

'When this person returned home,
He did not stop by to see me,
He did not stop by to see me,
His wailing will become my song.'
oh my GOD Ling, chill /out/

Confucius picking 300 poems for the Canon from 3000: oh yeah, gotta include 'He Didn't Text Me Back', that one's a *banger*

In conclusion, Confucius would certainly have canonised 'Bitch Better Have My Money', had he only had the opportunity to do so--

"This poem has also been interpreted as the lament of a young female relative ofa bride who has left the relative behind as the bride headed o to be married (line 2of each stanza could also be read, “She has gone to be married,” as in “Tao yao”).It was a common practice for a bride to take along several young women of herfamily, who became the husband’s secondary wives or concubines. This readingcomes no doubt in part because this poem immediately follows a related poem,“Xiao xing” (Little Stars [Mao no. 21]):" 

Some people are gay, kid. Also now I get the xiao xingchen thing, I seeeeeee.

"The oriole seems to symbolize the return from the martial life on campaign to thedomestic world of the family" 'reflecting the excited state of mind of the persona, a state of mind weall share before setting out on a journey, especially a journey home to our parents.' 
sure, jan

'But egrets are elegant birds and are used metaphorically todescribe courtiers'

"The beating of the work drums could not keep up!" You DO have work songs! I thought so.

"Woven and unbroken are the gourds, large and small."
how and why you gonna weave a gourd, fam?

"The reading of these poems as allegories, or the attempts to contextualizethem in the complex history of pre-Qin China, dominated the understanding ofall three hundred of the poems from the time the poems were rst written downin the middle of the rst millennium b.C.e. through the early Song dynasty (mid-eleventh century). These traditional interpretations were often quite explicit. The“Xiao xu” (Little Preface) of the Han dynasty, for example, read “I Beg of You,Zhong Zi” not as a love poem (as I did earlier) but as a criticism of the failure byDuke Zhuang of Zheng (r. 743–701 b.C.e.) to restrain his mother. If this correla-tion seems forced to us moderns, it was nevertheless accepted by most traditionalreaders until the Song dynasty scholars of the eleventh century began to arguefor more literal interpretations of these songs."  


 Need to check whether any of these worth looking into:

Allen, Joseph R. “Postface: A Literary History of the Shijing.” In The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, translated by Arthur Waley, edited by Joseph R. Allen, 336–383. Rev. ed. New York: Grove Press, 1996.

Karlgren, Bernhard, trans. The Book of Odes. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950.

Loewe, Michael. Shih chin. In Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographic Guide, edited by Michael Loewe, 414–423. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993.

Owen, Stephen. “The Classic of Poetry.” In An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911, translated and edited by Stephen Owen, 10–74. New York: Norton, 1996.

Riegel, Je rey. “Eros, Introversion, and the Beginnings of Shijing Commentary.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57, no. 1 (1997): 143–177.

Saussy, Haun. The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Schaberg, David. “Song and the Historical Imagination in Early China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59, no. 2 (1999): 305–361.

Van Zoeren, Steven. Poetry and Personality: Reading Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Waley, Arthur, trans. The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry. Edited by Joseph R. Allen. Rev. ed. New York: Grove Press, 1996.

Wang, C. H. From Ritual to Allegory: Seven Essays in Early Chinese Poetry. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1988.

Shih ching. In The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, edited by William H. Nienhauser Jr., 1:692–694. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. 

Re: How to read Chinese poetry : a guided anthology Cai, Zong-qi

[x_los]

Here are some links to some of the poems discussed being read out:

https://cup.columbia.edu/extras/sound-files-for-how-to-read-chinese-poetry

Re: How to read Chinese poetry : a guided anthology Cai, Zong-qi

[kitsunec4]

This is a really fascinating link for me, I memorized bits and pieces of the Tang 300 as any child does, but reading and examining them as literature was quite beyond me.

The resource is appreciated!